A Keystone State divided?

It's the kind of proposal that normally sounds far-fetched, but this scheme to split Pennsylvania's electoral votes by congressional district has the backing of some real heavy hitters in the state legislature:

Republicans in charge of the General Assembly want to change how the state hands out its electoral votes, a move that could reshape the national electoral strategies of future presidents and diminish Pennsylvania's role in choosing the country's leader.

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Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi wants to allocate the 20 electoral votes Pennsylvania will have in the next election according to who wins each of 18 congressional districts, plus two more for whoever wins the statewide popular vote, rather than the winner-take-all system the state now uses.

Pileggi said the new formula would better reflect what voters want.

In 2008, for instance, when Pennsylvania had 21 electoral votes, Sen. John McCain won 10 congressional districts to then-Sen. Barack Obama's 9, but Obama won the state by 620,000 votes. Under Pileggi's proposal, Obama would've gotten the two statewide electors, for a net win over McCain of one electoral vote.

As the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review indicates, the proposal would almost certainly help Republicans, who haven't won the popular vote in Pennsylvania since 1988, and would earn at least a few electoral votes under this setup.

But as much as it would help the GOP nationally, it would also undercut the importance of local powerbrokers, including the authors of the legislation and Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, whose appeal as a potential vice president would become much more limited.